Florida Is Trying To Attract Foreign Patients Instead Of Extending Insurance To Its Own Residents

[applegrove]

Florida Is Trying To Attract Foreign Patients Instead Of Extending Insurance To Its Own Residents

By Sy Mukherjee at ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/19/3416268/florida-medical-tourism-medicaid/

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The Florida state Senate’s Commerce and Tourism committee unanimously backed a bill on Tuesday that would appropriate $5 million in 2015 for attracting medical tourism — a burgeoning industry in which people travel to other countries to seek health care that is either too expensive or too difficult to access in their own. If the full legislature passes the funding, Florida’s tourism arm will direct a marketing campaign that plays up the state’s health care providers and specialty medical services to an international audience.

Medical tourism usually brings to mind the hundreds of thousands of Americans — both insured and uninsured — who go to other countries such as Costa Rica, Mexico, India, Thailand, and Brazil to seek treatment because medical care in the United States can be prohibitively expensive. But according to Patients Beyond Borders, between 600,000 and 800,000 foreign patients came to the U.S. for health services in 2013 despite the relatively high costs of
care here. These patients are often from countries that have yet to develop certain advanced procedures or technologies, or where those procedures are still far too costly. For instance, many international consumers visit well-known clinics such as the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Johns Hopkins in Maryland, and the Mayo Clinic arms in Arizona, Minnesota, and Florida for cancer care and dental, orthopedic, and cosmetic surgery.

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Florida has the second-highest uninsurance rate in the entire country. Very few adults qualify for Medicaid under the state’s current rules, which only makes the program available to parents with dependent children who make just a third of the poverty level. Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) stunned many political observers by embracing the Medicaid expansion in early 2013. “While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost of new people in Medicaid, I cannot, in good conscience, deny the uninsured access to care,” said Scott at the time.

But Florida lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass Medicaid expansion, and Scott began dodging questions on whether he still supports the provision after he filed for re-election. Most recently, reports have surfaced that Bean — the medical tourism bill’s main sponsor — may block a GOP proposal to accept billions in Medicaid expansion dollars. Bean prefers “a state-based, highly limited insurance exchange that… technically cannot be called an ‘insurance exchange’ because the products are so limited they do not meet the legal definition of insurance,” according Florida health reform advocate Gary Stein.


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[Mika]

1. Link?

Thanks.

[applegrove]

2. Ooooops. Thanks.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/19/3416268/florida-medical-tourism-medicaid/

[Cali_Democrat]

3. Truly evil.

State governments that aren't expanding medicaid are truly evil to the core. They don't care about their taxpayers, they don't care about the poor and they certainly don't care about the uninsured.

They oppose expansion all because of that black guy in the white house.

Thousands will die because of this.

Truly evil.

[applegrove]

4. You said it well. If people don't have money the GOP wants them gone.

[Swede Atlanta]

5. That is the Republican way.....

Ensure the profits of the corporate masters.....keep the riff raft in their place.